By Nury Vittachi

Monday, 06 May 2013

Boy videoed driving Ferrari

New frontrunners for Stupid Parents Award

DID YOU SEE the report about the boy who was regularly handed the keys to Daddy’s supercars from age five onwards? The kid drove a Lamborghini and a Bentley and a Porsche when he could hardly reach the pedals.

By the time the boy was nine, Daddy had a red Ferrari F430. Junior REALLY wanted to drive that one, too, but the folks resisted. The list price was US$200,000.

“He was insisting for months,” his mother Amal told a reporter from NDTV.

So she used Modern Parenting Logic, which goes like this.

1) Kid makes outrageous demand.

2) Parent refuses.

3) Compromise becomes only option.

4) Child compromises by shutting up and adult compromises by giving in.

So mom handed him the keys. (Note to this columnist’s kids: You can insist for months, years, decades or centuries, but the answer is NO, whatever the question is.)

The boy zoomed off in the red sports car. And I don’t mean sitting on Dad’s lap. He drove the Ferrari by himself, with the only other person in the car being another child.

Proud mom and dad posted a video on YouTube of him (see below) driving around, and horrified fellow citizens of Kerala, South India, notified police, who arrested the boy’s father, Mohammed Nisham.

Mr Nisham clearly has:

1) Astonishing amounts of money;

2) total ignorance of the law; and

3) not the slightest interest in the safety of others.

Surely we should give him an Asian Businessman of the Year award?

***

***

IN OTHER NEWS…

***

***

A THEME PARK builder in China created a giant statue of himself as Buddha. I’m not saying that this guy, not named in press announcements, has a huge ego, but I bet Kim Jong-un wishes he’d thought of it first. The statue in Longhua Playground, Luoyang, Henan, is made of fake gold. Do people like this have no friends to advise them? Or are they just dumb?

Founder: “Hmm, I think I’ll build a towering gold-colored statue of myself as the Buddha.”

Friend: “That would be embarrassingly crass.”

Founder: “Why thank you.”

***

A DISORDERLY woman subdued by police died soon after her arrest. Police in Japan revealed that a fat officer had sat on her. He weighed 100 kilos, which is equivalent to one US football player or the combined weight of every Japanese woman I’ve ever met. The Daily Yomiuri says the economy-sized cop may be charged with “use of excessive force”. Surely it should be “use of excessive weight”?

***

THE SON OF a mainland Chinese official tried to get good marks at Bath University in the UK by buying them. Li Yang put a pile of money on his professor’s desk and said: “I am a businessman.” After he gets out of UK jail, he has a great career ahead in the Chinese communist party.

***

US INTELLIGENCE agencies asked to create a psychological profile of Kim Jong-un said he was a self-obsessed, introspective movie addict with hostility issues. Or as parents say, “a teenager”.

***

CHRISTIAN FARDEL, also known as Grandpa, sent in a heart-warming video to start the week. To counteract all the dashboard cam videos of drivers behaving badly, particularly in Russia, someone made a video of all the moments when drivers behaved really well.